


Swarm

by Samuel Blake (SpokenSoftly)



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4212930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpokenSoftly/pseuds/Samuel%20Blake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's amazing, isn't it, how a little change in how a power works can have so many butterflies?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.1

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to Death-Limes on Tumblr for going through to beta-read with me.

**Node 1.1**

_3rd of January, 2011_

The morning started off tolerably. I was up, dressed, and down for a quiet breakfast with my dad by 7:15 before going for my morning run and getting my body moving to start the day. Not as refreshing as I'd like, with a crime scene cordon around a house two blocks away from ours, but better than it could've been.

I was home by 7:45, out the door at 7:50 with exchanged "have a good days" still echoing in the metal of our front door. (Wood doesn't do well in an area disputed between the two major gangs in Brockton. And the Merchants.) Eight minutes later and I was at school, ready to start the day and (hopefully) not encounter the three girls that had made my life a special little kind of Hell for the last year and change.

It took less than a minute for whatever uncaring deity there was to decide that I was to be shat on particularly hard that day. I was headed to my locker, getting ready to get my textbooks out after a week away, when I smelled it; some foul, sickly-sweet stench, getting stronger as I headed towards the Chemistry classroom, smelling like curdled milk and the cat that had crawled into our A/C box and died two winters before that we hadn't discovered for three months. Like molasses and damp cane sugar and death. I hoped they'd clean up whatever horrible reaction had made that sort of stench, gagging as I reached my locker and feeling vaguely sorry for Chris, the janitor. He’d probably need a gas mask to stand it in the Chem room if it was this bad fifteen feet from the closed door. That thought went straight out the window when I opened my locker and realized what the stench really was.

I’d told myself that bearing with the Bitches Three was all I needed to do for my last two years at Winslow, that they couldn’t do anything worse to me. I'd been humiliated before by the girls, had a cup of laundry marker ink thrown in my face on school picture day last year by Madison (slap on the wrist), had my mother's flute stolen and thoroughly destroyed last semester by Sophia (no punishment at all for that), had Mr. Gladly's final exam dropped in the shredder when Emma went around collecting them, earning me a C- in my best course (no punishment for her and administration had insisted on a parent-teacher conference regarding my "apathy").

This outdid all of that. My textbooks, my art, four of my notebooks, my spare change of clothes, everything I'd left in the locker over break was coated in some foul sludge, insects crawling all over it. The textbooks were ruined beyond repair, the art was years old and already rotting with the insects and humidity and blood. Two of the notebooks were journals I'd poured my feelings to get them out of my head, to a large degree the only way I’d managed to deal with the bullying for the last year and a half, now gnawed by termites until they were just little slats of cardboard sitting in congealed blood. The other two were gone entirely, all of my notes for the last semester reduced to a pulpy mess. And it was definitely blood on the walls, the tampons everywhere along the floor of the locker and taped to the walls confirmed that beyond any doubt. There were a dozen girls laughing around me, probably some of them had contributed, and then there was a pair of hands grabbing me, shoving me in, slamming the locker door behind me, the click of my combination lock sliding into place.

 

* * *

 

I don't remember how long I was in there. At least two hours, long enough for the bell to ring twice and my voice to go hoarse. There was a mosquito that had landed on my left eyebrow and was contentedly sucking away, probably infecting me with something. I wanted out, my body was aching, my knuckles and palms were bloody from having tried to beat my way out of the locker, my nose had shut down after the first few minutes in self-defense, this was hands-down the most utterly fucking miserable I'd ever been, and-

[Attach. Divide. Multiply.]

-I wasn't there any more. Or, rather I was, but there were a _lot_ of me. A few tens of thousands, at least, all shapes and sizes and crawling all over each other and wow this was a lot less disgusting than I’d imagine being a human-sized mass of bugs ought to be and _wow_ those cockroaches and worms and grubs where my feet had been were part of me now and that was weird because I had their memories and food.

Food was good. All around me. Better to not clean up the evidence, though. Swarm over it, look for fingerprints, more grubs part of me now, more cockroaches, some fruit flies, some carrion flies, a scorpion in the brickwork behind the locker, a bunch of spiders and ants beneath it, some oils that felt like skin to the cockroaches on the locker handle as I swarmed out and into the hall and up the stairs and into the nurse’s office and she was screaming and I pulled myself together and I was human again and wow my clothes came with me that was convenient but I was still bleeding and felt awful now and-

“I think I need to go to the hospital, ma’am.”

And then everything got really blurry. Must’ve been all the fresh air after being trapped for so long, made me light-headed.

 

* * *

 

_5th of January, 2011_

I knew where I was when I woke up because there was a little sticker on the rail to my bed that read _Brockton Bay General Hospital._ And I felt… really nice. Floaty, kind of. My dad was sitting next to my bed, there was something dripping stuff into my arm, something was beeping in the background, and a man stood in the corner with a polearm thing and a goatee in power armor. _He_ was in the armor, I mean. Not the goatee.

“Hey, ish Halbeard!”

...not my finest moment.

 


	2. 1.2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Death-Limes on Tumblr and to Cyberweasel89 on pretty much anywhere for going through to beta-read with me.

**Node 1.2**

_5th of January, 2011_

“Hey, ish Halbeard!”

The few seconds after I said that were quiet, not because I’d shocked anyone (I was high as a kite on painkillers so everyone kinda expected it actually, or Dad told me _he_ did at least) but because there really wasn’t a good response to that. I was the one, then, that broke the silence. “Hey I’m really loopy right now, is that because I’m high on painkillers? Cuz that’s… that’s kinda… yeah. Phooof... “

It took a second for Halbeard to think of something to say. “I can see now isn’t the best time, Mister Hebert. I’ll come back when your daughter is more coher-”

That was stupid, no way was I gonna let him blow me off like that! “Nah! Nah, I got an idea,” I said. Well, slurred. “Lesseeee…”

I concentrated on how I’d felt right after I’d escaped the locker and-

-and I was fifty million houseflies buzzing off the bed and forming the shape of my body in a chair in the corner and forming back together and I had the same clothes not that stupid hospital gown that was nice and there was some kinda stain on the bed looked like veins maybe painkillers and-

-and I came down from the sensation-high. Was it going to be like that every time?

…Oh god I called Armsmaster “Halbeard.” My face could not _get_ more red when I realized that. The embarrassment even managed to crowd away the lingering pain and give me the opportunity to realize why I was probably in the hospital. “I…”  
  
I turned into fifty million houseflies again and just stayed there for a moment, crawling over myself and thinking. Houseflies couldn’t feel shame and embarrassment. I didn’t even bother going through the stimulus I was getting, just shutting off every sense I could and thinking as hard as I could. I was back about ten seconds later, Dad looking distinctly queasy and Armsmaster a little put off himself. “I, uh… yeah. Little sore, but I’m good.”

“Good.”

… Oh god the awkwardness. It was almost palpable...

It took several minutes to get the awkward out of the way, including twelve seconds of Armsmaster very visibly resetting his mental equilibrium, at the end of which he opened with, “It’s obvious you know about your powers, then.”

“I… yeah,” I responded, Dad just kind of sitting there in the corner, eyes closed. I found out later that he’d already talked with Armsmaster and was just there to make sure I wasn’t pressured into anything. “I had a few seconds when I woke up where I thought I might’ve been hallucinating, but… yeah. I can turn into bugs.”

Just saying it made me reflexively shudder. How could that even work, neurons and muscles and bone turning into the insides of a million or more insects…? Fifty million houseflies, and then some. Something like a billion or more dust mites, if I decided to try that out. And I hadn’t, yet. The number was just there, in my head, as if I could instinctively know that turning into a swarm of Asian giant hornets would produce about 38 thousand specimens, and I could turn into three hundred and seven African giant millipedes if I felt like going to the effort. I couldn’t help but wonder why I needed to be older before I could turn into some of the insects my power could turn me into; I had a sense that I wasn’t a “big girl,” so I couldn’t turn into an arthropleura yet, whatever that was…

“I know,” came the response to what I’d said, and I jerked slightly in the chair. I’d almost forgotten Armsmaster was there for a second. “Unfortunately, your trip through the hallway and the nurse’s resultant hysterics mean that so does most of your school. I would say your secret identity is ‘compromised,’ but at this point the word is horribly inadequate.”

Shit. “Shit.”

“...Yes. Well. In a rare show of good sense, PHO hasn’t given you a horrible name. All things considered, ‘Swarm’ could be a lot worse. ‘Skitter’ was considered, but it seems not even the Internet is willing to lump you straight in with the villains and general consensus was that the name sounded too… ‘sneaky.’ “

Wow. I could hear the air quotes dropping into place, practically. And wow, that was… unusually sensible. Last person who’d had a public trigger like that (and why was it always the ones in traumatic situations who got their powers publically?) had been Chubster, the one before that a guy in the late nineties who’d ended up being called Fantastic Elastic. “Huh, that’s nice of them. So… what happens next?”

It took Armsmaster almost a minute before he answered, standing stock still the entire time. “Officially, I give you an invitation to join the Wards. Unofficially, I’ll wait until you’ve had a chance to talk it over with your fath-”

“I’ll do it.”

I’d had an Alexandria lunchbox since I was a kid, ran around the house when I was a little girl pretending I was Hero, even got some Armsmaster underpants on a kick. Which was a lot more embarrassing now I was staring him in the face. But that didn’t matter; I could join the Wards. Do something about the gangs, or at least help with it. Make sure that no-one else had to go through what I went through with Sophia, Emma, and Madison. “Dad,” I added as I turned towards him, “it’s alright, right? I’ve got powers now, I can help people, I _want_ to help people. Please?”

Dad closed his eyes and looked, suddenly, very tired, a mixture of approval and resignation in his expression when he looked at me. “Don’t let your grades slip, okay?”

 

* * *

 

The talks about when I could come in and be shown around would have lasted a few minutes longer if there hadn’t been a knock at the (open) door, a man easily in his seventies wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit, black shirt and tie, standing in the doorway. “Excuse me gentlemen, miss,” he said in possibly the driest voice I’d ever heard in person, sounding like I imagined a mummy might. “Attorney Joseph Slatterly, I was contacted by the PRT requesting _pro bono_ legal assistance in a potential prosecution?”

Dad was up and to the door before I could react. “Danny Hebert,” he said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand and steer him into the hall, shutting the door behind them. Armsmaster coughed after a second. “That was unfortunate timing. I assume this Saturday is acceptable?”

I thought it over, then realized that the excitement itself was… probably making me think too favorably towards it. Or at least urging me to get it as soon as possible. I could make the impulse decision, but I seemed to think more clearly while bugs even if I also got a lot more input. I could put up with that long enough to make a decision without kiddish overeagerness getting in the way. “Sorry, I need to be bees for a second, if you don’t mind?”

He sat down where Dad had been and picked up the Sears catalog.

I was eight hundred thousand bees and _the upholstery was delicious_ and there was some sort of sugar residue on the floor and Armsmaster had some food crumbs caught in his beard, nummy, and wow ultraviolet looked pretty and I was back to normal and… and there went the sensation high. “Did… I just eat your beard-crumbs?”

“Yes.”

“...sorry.”

“Right. Saturday?”

“...yeah, I’ll bee there.”

“Good. Let’s see… your father should show up at least ten minutes before or after you. You’ll be… a young woman who wants to complain to Aegis about the recent wave of hate crime against pro wrestlers. Your father will be… a reporter wanting to interview Miss Militia about the recent spate of hedgehog abductions. Mention this to the ferryman. Good afternoon,” he concluded, having stood and walked to the door as he spoke, shutting it behind him immediately afterwards.

…

“Wait, I’m a _what_ now?”


End file.
